How did we fare?

Dude, we made out like bandits.

After I hit "publish" on the last post, the DirecTV came back on and never went out for the rest of the night.  Neither did the power.  It flickered a couple times, at one point it flickered pretty bad and I ran over and got the headlamps and Joey wore his proudly.  But the power never failed.

I was finishing up the dishes in the kitchen, aka trying to use the water while we still had it, when I heard a pretty loud noise outside.  Fearing for the truck, which was already pretty much parked in the front yard to get away from the forest, I asked Joey to go check outside.  It was the trashcans.  Our 3 trashcans that were nestled against the house had been blown over.  Between those, and one of my pots of mums on the front porch, those were our only casualties.  Oh, and a tree snapped in half in the backyard so that should be fun to dispose of.

Grandmother Willow? (Cause I know you were worried.) She's a CHAMP!

I don't really have any pictures to share unless you want to see a bunch of selfies of me and whatever Min Pin was sitting on my lap at the time...

We were SO bored. Although I was lucky enough to be able to get some work done.

I'm still waiting to hear back about my beloved Stone Harbor.  Initial reports on Facebook don't look good.

via

via

These are both places we frequent.  The Diller/Fisher office is right on the corner of the main drag in town.  Fred's Tavern is reporting that "things are not looking good".  They just remodeled about a year ago, too.

Crossing our fingers for good news on the house!

~SG

Helllllooooooo!

I'm alive! I made it through a looong week at work that involved a 3-day meeting with very early mornings and very late nights.  I didn't have time for blogging, but I didn't forget about it either!

Now I'm at home like most everyone else, riding out Hurricane Sandy.  I'm trying to refrain from making any "Grease" references but it's proving quite difficult...

We're hunkered down here in Woodbridge.  I'm not worried about much except maybe a tree crashing down on our house or the sump pump not working.  But those are trivial things compared to what's happening in Stone Harbor, NJ right now.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO right as I wrote that, our satellite TV went out :( :( :( :(

As I said, trivial.

Let's say a prayer for our little house in Stone Harbor... (it's not OUR house, but it sure feels like it having spent 20 summers there.)  They already have several feet of standing water, and the worst is yet to come.

I couldn't find a pic.  This is the best I could do.  It's the brown house on the left.

Joey's phases of boredom are now officially in effect.

1. When satellite goes out, watch Disney movies.

2. When power goes out, read Harry Potter.

I promise I'll be back later this week with a Halloween update.

Stay safe, everyone!

~SG

Dog Shaming

So I'm hoping you have all heard of http://dog-shaming.com/ by now.  It's a pretty amazing website.  I always say I'm going to take a pic of Doc or Chloe next time they do something bad and send it in.  But in the heat of the moment, I can never find any paper/markers, and by the time I do, he/she has forgotten what they have done and moved on/ran away.

So, last weekend we had a little incident.

Around 5pm Saturday, my sister got a few text messages from me that read as follows:

Me: Chloe has something to tell you.

Me: It's about your sweatpants.

Me: Picture-->

Me: They are now crotchless.

I was gone for legit 5 MINUTES and this is what happened.  I didn't have time to grab a marker/piece of paper, but I was sure to document it by making her wear the crotchless-pants-of-shame.

Bad dog.

Things that go Bump in the night: Part II

(Why do I have the feeling this is going to become a multi-part series??)

You may remember the time my razor fell off the wall in the shower and caused mass panic.

So when I called Joey frantically, he first asked me if I needed a new suction cup for my razor.

Let me back up.  It's yesterday at  5:30am-ish, still completely dark out.  Joey had already left for work (yeah, he's crazy). I know this because the garage is directly under our bedroom, and every time the garage door opens/closes it is SO LOUD.  So I knew he was gone. 

Me and the pins were snuggled up under the covers trying to stay warm because SOMEONE likes to sleep with two fans on even though it's freezing in the house already. 

Then, POW!/CRASH!  The best way I can describe the noise I heard was either some kind of explosion orrr that someone had driven full speed up my driveway and into our 3 trashcans like they were bowling pins.  My initial thought was that a power box had exploded outside our house, but we still had electricity.  The dogs were barking and I peeked out the window but I could barely see anything without my contacts in.  My next thought was whether I should call 911 or Joey.  I decided to call Joey because I figured one of the neighbors would call 911.

(Yeah! It was that loud!)

I told him what happened and after the initial quip, he realized how scared I was.  Unfortunately, he was already in Arlington by this point and it was officially time for me to put on my man panties and go find out what the noise was.  Up until now I was locked in the bedroom and the hounds were at the door, waiting to be released.

The first thing he did was told me to get my gun.  I'm not usually the gun-person.  I like my pink .22 but it likes to live in it's safe place, on Safety, with no bullets in it.  This was the first time since owning it that I was actually glad to have it and know how to use it.  That is such a weird thing to hear myself say (read?), but for all I knew, somebody had blown a hole in the side of my house a la "Oceans Eleven" and was robbing me. 

The next thing Joey did was tell me to let the dogs go downstairs.  NO!!! I protested.  If someone is down there, they might get hurt, or escape!  Joey audibly rolled his eyes and reminded me that if someone WAS down there, they'd notify me of that and it might save my life.  Majorly uncool moment? Realizing your dogs are your front line of defense :(

I relented, but opened the door a crack and off they went.  The barking ceased, sniffing ensued, and nothing could be heard except the pitter patter of little nails that need to be trimmed.

Then he told me to put in my contacts, which is fun to do while holding a phone and gun, and then I went downstairs.  Once again, like before, I was all James Bond around the corners.  I turned on every. single. light. in the house.  Sorry, electric bill.  Of course, I found nothing. 

I decided it was time to saddle up and go outside.  I mentioned to Joey (who was obviously still on the phone with me) that this is the part in the horror movies where the girl hears the noise, goes outside to investigate, and gets murdered.  He brought up the point that the girl doesn't usually have a gun in the movies.  Good point.

I opened the door and stepped outside.  It was still dark out, cold, and the neighborhood was completely silent.  After I heard the crash, I was expecting to hear sirens.  It was horrible to realize that everyone else was still sleeping soundly.  Thank GOD the dogs had barked or else I would have been questioning my own sanity at that point.

I peeked in the garage, the car was still there and not ablaze.  I didn't dare open the basement, but I locked the door.  I looked around back to see if a tree had fallen... nothing.  Meanwhile the dogs were so over it and like, 'Mom where's my treat??'

I finally gave in, went back upstairs, and said goodbye to Joey.
After a while, I calmed down enough to turn off a few lights and lay down to try to get a little more rest before I had to go to work.  The dogs knew I was upset about something and did not do what they usually do, which is crawl under the covers and snuggle with me.  They stayed on guard, watching the door for any funny business. I love them.

(Just ignore the hamper full of clean clothes in the background.  It has been sitting in that exact spot for 3 4 days.)

Because of my awesome dogs, I was able to actually go back to sleep for about 20 minutes, because I knew they would alert me if anything was wrong.  When I woke up, the sun was shining.  I got ready for work and did another look around the yard for anything obvious, like a tree, crashed plane, etc. 

Of course I found nothing.  I put the pins in their palace and opened the garage door before grabbing my purse, keys, etc. On the way around to get in my car, I noticed some wires/stuff hanging from the ceiling.

Hmm. That's not usually hanging there like that......

And then I looked up.

Besides the spider webs and other disgustingness, you can clearly see that this entire side of the garage door has detached and is currently hanging on by one screw.

That noise I heard?  There is a HUUUUUGE spring that connects the garage door to the pulley system that operates it.  Basically the spring came un-sprung, and my garage door detached itself from the ceiling, and was 1 screw away from coming crashing down completely....on my car.

Remember in the beginning of this post when I told you the garage door is REALLY LOUD from our room?  Yeah, explains why it sounded like armageddon.

Next thing I did was get in my car, turn it on, and back out as fast as I could!  I made it out unscathed and held my breath as I hit the button to close the garage door.  It closed, and didn't come crashing down (yet).  But you could definitely tell it was broken...

It's sitting at a bit of an odd angle, no?

I called Joey, let him know the news, and headed into work.  Later I found out that the same thing happened to his Dad at their machine shop, and he'd rushed to the front of the store thinking someone had crashed their car through the window.  Garage doors are NO JOKE people!!  He got home from work and secured it/locked it in place.  So I had to park outside/get in a cold car this morning. #sadface #spoiled

(yeah, I hashtagged my blog.)

So, what are my weekend plans? What's next on the house agenda?? That's right!! Fixing the garage door(s). 

~SG

Taming the Jungle

We did so much this weekend, I had to spread out our progress over multiple posts.  It's great to be so productive.

While I was cleaning/sanding/painting, Joey was outside with the chain saw, taming the jungle.  Or at least starting to.  We have approximately 1/2 acre of property, but a good chunk of that is covered with forest.  Behind our house, there is a hill, covered with ivy, that leads up into the woods where there are lots of big trees, but also tons of little ones that have just sprouted up.  Someday, we'd like to be able to walk around up there, maybe clear it out and put a little fire pit? Eh?? But for now, we are in the beginning process of just cutting sh*t down.

So, enter Joey with chainsaw.

Here is the "before " picture I took before I left to run errands. (And don't think my heart didn't skip a beat when I heard sirens while I was out and about.)

After a long day of door painting, 2 runs to the dump, alot of sweating and getting stuck in the hands with thorns,  here is the same spot:

It might not look like much, but this is progress!

~SG

The Big Door Reveal

What a productive weekend!! We accomplished 17 miles of running, painted our front door, started to tame the jungle, and I even baked a few things!

But, let's get down to business.  Thank you to those who lended a hand in helping us choose our door color.

What color did we end up with??

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Red!
Well, 'Cranberry'

So let's rewind a little bit and take a look at how we got here.

First, we had to take the door off the hinges. But since we don't have a screen door or anything, I had to tape trash bags across the front door.  My BIL said he thought it was a terrible Halloween decoration... haha. Thanks for your faith in my classiness, Jason. 

Baby gate to keep dogs IN.
(But don't think they weren't locked in the bathroom behind 2 doors... hahaha)

Then, after taking off all the hard ware, I had to clean, sand, and clean it again before I could start painting.

My workshop

Thennnnn it was finally time to start painting!  I had to use special paint because of the type of door (don't remember what kind).  It was really thick!! Joey was less than impressed with my painting skillz but hey, I told him if he didn't like it he could do it himself.  So I continued painting ;)

After the 1st coat

After waiting a loooong time for it to dry, Joey put it back on the hinges and put the hardware back on.  It's not perfect, but it sure looks nice!!

Mr. Handyman, himself.  He's thrilled.

I think the door ties everything together perfectly.  I also did some extra cleaning up there.  I swept off all the dead bugs, cleaned off the rocking chairs/bench, and used the broom to knock down quite a few 8-leggers... Ewwww.  Our front porch is now spider-free (for the most part), and all we have left to do is carve those punkins!!!

~SG

Confession Time

I've been cheating on you.......... with another blog.

A long time ago, I decided I felt bad for people that didn't like running, so I ceased to talk about running on this blog.  Then, Joey and I got a hare-brained idea....

Let's run a marathon!

So, I started another blog.

I didn't think I wanted to share this blog with my friends until I really committed to the marathon.  4 months, 2 plane tickets, and 17 miles later, I think I'm ready to finally admit it.

We are running the Walt Disney World Marathon on January 13, 2013.

"Cause let's be honest... where else would I want to run 26.2 miles?  We might not be fast and we might fall off the wagon sometimes, but we still have 87 days left and a lot of miles to run.

Here is our progress, in blog form:

http://thoughtshesaidrum.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

Which Pin will it be??

Ding ding ding! You win!

(The other one refuses to sit still for pictures.  He's like his Dad.)

Happppppy Friday!!!
~SG

Well, How was it?

It was gross.

Oh, the anniversary? It was great!  Well, it was more like any other day, really.  I worked a really long day, then came home and we had Winese for dinner.  Red wine and steamed dumplings?? Great combo!

Then I opened the sweeeetest card from Joey and he said my gift hadn't arrived yet.  No biggie.  So he opened my gift, and I was thrilled with myself because he was actually surprised!  He loved it.  What was it??  Remember, 2nd year is cotton.  So I got him a tee shirt... from one of our favorite shows.. SWAMP PEOPLE! hahaaahaha

After dinner it was time for the cake.  Like I said above- it was gross.  The mousse filling had definitely gone sour like oh... 2 years ago, and it basically tasted like sour milk.  We didnt even swallow the bites we took.  They were spit out and the whole cake was tossed in the trash.  We tried.

The above pictures serve as proof that we actually did this.

That's really all I have to report.  We did 2 vacations last year for our 1 year, so this year we sat out and saved our pennies for our big trip to WDW in 2013.  <---- post coming soon about this!

Also, our Halloween costumes came in the mail. I'm so excited.  Just waiting for the rest of Doc and Chloe's costumes to arrive.... :)

~SG

2 Years

Hooray! Today is our 2 year wedding anniversary.  On the docket for tonight is a good old fashioned Winese dinner (Wine + Chinese food. Genius, I know.) and the exchanging of the gifts.  For your 2nd year, the gift is supposed to be "cotton".  Apparently my gift came from Vietnam so it might not be here yet.... stay tuned.... OH and the cake eating. Yes, tomorrow's post should be a good one!

~SG

3 Day Weekend!

Happy Tuesday! Here's where I've been the last few days:

Friday
I got home from work and was surprised with some pretty pink roses and Oktoberfest.  And dinner.  Must be our anniversary weekend ;) 

Speaking of anniversaries (which isn't til tomorrow, btw) we took our wedding cake out of the freezer where it's been for 2 years.  So gross.  I'm going to eat one bite, just to say I did it. Then it's sayonara, cake.

Srsly, how disgusting does this look?!

Saturday
I tried to sleep in but didn't make it past 8:30.  I was woken up to the delicious smell of bacon sizzling in the pan.  We ate breakfast and then I went to Michaels to do some Halloween decor shopping.  I also picked up a few supplies for a little crafty project for next weekend.  While I was out spending frivolous money, Joey got some grass seed and fertilizer at Lowes and prepped the lawn for winter/next spring.  I then started my weekend-long project of cleaning the house/decorating for fall and Halloween!

I know, you already saw it on Instagram. Sorry, didn't take pictures of much else.  I'm pretty proud of my little white table too. This was a Craigslist find!!

After lunch it was time to head to Luray, VA for a little work gathering at one of our co-worker's vacation homes.  It was freaking beautiful.  In a strange coincidence, the vacation home was around the corner from the cabins Joey grew up going fishing/hunting in.  So it was a little walk drive down memory lane for him.  I was thrilled about the opportunity to wear flannel and boots and enjoy some wine and chill (literally) by the camp fire.  We also stuffffed ourselves with the italian buffet.  So delicious. 

Sunday
I tried to sleep in again, was wide awake at 7:30, got some tea (cause we were out of coffee creamer) and fell back to sleep until 10.  Whatever.  I went grocery shopping, then came home and settled in for the first half of the Eagles-Steelers game.  I only watched the first quarter because I just got so frustrated.  Plus I was playing Joey this week in Fantasy Football and I got my ass whooped.

Joey "no-pictures-please" Gish and Doc, monitoring the Fantasy Team

So instead of watching the rest of the game, we headed around the corner to Joey's aunt/uncle's house for some fried chicken and NASCAR.  We got to hang out with Joey's fam and some other friends, and all got a great laugh when my BIL, Jason, showed up wearing the same exact hoodie as Joey....

TWINSIES!!

After that it was more football and enjoying the fact that we didn't have to get up and go to work in the morning!

Monday
We wanted to work on house stuff out doors, but it was too cold/rainy for that.  I guess you will just have to wait to find out the outcome of the great door-painting decision 2012.  I did get some mums and pumpkins for the front steps, so that sort of counts, right?  Other than that, I cleaned the crap out of the upstairs master bath, did 80 loads of laundry, and started to set up the basement a little bit. 


In conclusion, we really did nothing of value this weekend, and that was really awesome.  It's nice to have a weekend just to enjoy our house, each other, and our pins. 

Hope everyone's short work week is off to a good start!

~SG

Fall Flag!

Just wanted to share our newest addition with you all!

I'm thinking of having Joey remove the flag holder and install it higher on the board so the flag pole can hang horizontally.  However this will involve creating another hole in the new board.  So I might be out of luck.

....That's all I really have to report.

After some time, we've decided to ramp up the projects again and have quite a few things planned for this 3-day weekend!  I look forward to sharing our little improvements with you.

Have a Happy Tuesday!

~SG

Making Decisions the Blogger Way...

Time to make another big decision! So I'm coming to you, my readers, for advice.

I need you to take a look a the three choices below, and then vote in the poll on what color we should paint our front door. 

Please note, this is only for fun, as per the below conversation I'm pretty sure my mind has already been made up for me.

Gish, Sarah
i'm excited about painting the front door
i wish we could paint it another color
i think a deep purple would look really nice
very deep, not OMG PURPLE
you better hurry up and say something before i make up my mind that we're painting the front door purple

Gish, Joseph (Joe)
I'd light it on fire and make you build us a new door from the trees I cut down in the back yard

Gish, Sarah
i think you should look at photos of other houses. i think it would look really nice
deep dark purple
not what you think when you hear the word "purple"

Gish, Joseph (Joe)
I don't care what color purple
the shutters are green, I refuse to have a purple door


......So you can imagine how it went when I brought up the idea of having a red front door...........

Anyway, without further ado, here are your choices:

A) Red

B.) Purple

C.) Green

D.) White (the way it already is)

Thanks!

~SG

The B that Stole my Sweater

Let me preface this story (because I know your eyes are immedately drawn to the photo) with the fact that it was taken on a Friday afternoon, at the end of the day, at the end of the fiscal year, and in conjunction with the fact that I think self portraits via phone always look ridiculous.

But I wanted to record what I was wearing that day because of what happened to me Friday morning. Of course I immediately made a mental note to write about it for my blog because nothing exciting is really going on in my life right now and this was CONTENT!

So Friday morning I was driving to work through the streets of Alexandria, VA, sipping my brought-from-home coffee, listening to my Disney CD, wondering if Joey would let me nix our run on Saturday for some good old fashioned beer drinking, and then I saw her.

That B was wearing my sweater!

But wait- let me get into more detail before you realize that the entire reason for this post was because this girl was wearing the same sweater as me.

I mean, I'm pretty sure I bought this thing like 3 years ago.  It is not designer, it did not come from a store at the "mall".  I don't think it came from Walmart, but I'd gamble it came from Kohls/Target/TJ Maxx, etc.  I hardly ever wear it.  I think this might be the 2nd time I'd ever worn it to work, because it's kind of hard to pair with work clothes.  For a Friday in early fall though?  Just the ticket.

And this girl, waiting at a busstop, drinking her brought-from-home coffee, was totally wearing the same sweater as me! The nerve!

I immediately got to work and messaged by bff, Gage, because I knew my husband could care less about it.  In fact, he's probably reading this right now completely embarassed by the fact that I wrote an entire post about it.  In fact, I'm going to add him to my Labels.

So, there you have it. I've wasted an entire 5 minutes of your day. 

I hope you enjoyed it!

~SG